Car Review: 2006 Saab 9-3 Aero Convertible 20 Years Edition

Is it obvious that Saab is one of the best-kept automotive secrets in Canada? The General Motors-owned Swedish automaker thinks so — and it wants you to know it and pass it on.

Saab celebrates its 20th anniversary of making convertibles this year. It also received the Best in Show award for its Aero X concept car during its world premiere at the Geneva Motor Show in March. And its sales figures are up 29% this year in Canada. So, how is it that we see so few Saabs dotted among the urban landscape of BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes?

“Saab is not an obvious choice, it’s a niche brand,” says Magnus Hansson, Saab Canada’s brand team manager. “It’s more subtle. BMW or Mercedes are a very obvious status symbol; Saab doesn’t really appeal to those types of people. They don’t need a vehicle to tell everyone who they are.”

What Saab is not keeping secret is its Aero X concept car, which made its Canadian debut to journalists last week or how its design elements are likely to pop up in future Saabs. “You see some key elements a wraparound windscreen, the aerodynamic form, turbine wheels,” says Jan Ake Jonsson, the Sweden-based managing director of Saab.

“Without saying too much, you’ll see elements of this vehicle in the future. Maybe the front will be on a next-generation 9-5 or the rear on a future 9-3.”

Though not as rare as concept cars, Saabs — especially when splashed out in electric blue, the signature shade for the 20 Years Edition still get double-takes in Toronto bedroom villages such as Kleinburg, where the houses rival castles. There, Porsches, Audis, Bimmers and Benzes are a dime a dozen. But drop the soft top on Saab’s Austrian-made 9-3 convertible and golfers playing hooky from work and mothers pushing their Peg Perego strollers take notice.

Just over 20 years ago, the then CEO of Saab USA noticed there was something missing from the parking lot of his New Jersey office — a Saab convertible. He put a phone call in to head office in Sweden, recalling the “dream car” Saab had presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show a few years earlier. With a stock of Saab 900 sedans that hadn’t yet sold, he ordered the tops cut off of 400 cars — and the Saab convertible was born. Production of the first-gen convertible — between 1987 and 1994 — numbered 49,000. Not bad for a small, Swedish, niche automaker.

Fast forward to last week: I’m sitting in the driver-designed cockpit (Saab’s history is rooted in aviation as is its name: Saab is short for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget. It started making planes nearly 70 years ago and cars 60 years ago). The third-generation Saab convertible arrived in the fall of 2003. While it is three years old, the interior is still modern, with the curve of the dashboard, the angle of all of the controls and dials facing the driver and Saab’s ignition placed distinctly on the centre console between the handbrake and the gear lever.

Out on the road with the roof down, it moves nicely over country roads and hills and valleys, snaking through twists and turns. As in most convertibles, long hair funnels into tornado-like spins. The available windscreen (which folds up into a neat package and fits in the trunk) keeps both gusts and noise to a minimum and makes for a more comfortable ride.

Under the 9-3 convertible’s hood is a new, turbocharged 2.8-litre V6. Saab’s explanation of how a turbo engine works is one of the most clearly defined I’ve come across: “No larger than a hairdryer, a turbocharger recycles a car’s hot exhaust air, allowing for greater power with a smaller engine.”

That turbo engine blows 250 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque — good for a zero-to-100-kilometres-an-hour time of seven seconds. Out on the highway the convertible purrs along so happily and smoothly it’s necessary to keep one eye on the road and the other on the odometer.

There’s a choice of a six-speed manual transmission or a five-speed automatic — as in the tester — which skips along smoothly through the gears without so much as a wee hiccup.

Saab’s concept behind building a convertible is to make a car that’s a “four-season four-seater.” With the roof up, the car is nearly as quiet as a metal-topped sedan. Headroom is lofty far from the claustrophobia induced by some soft tops. While the C-pillars the posts that hold the back window in place will always be exceptionally large in any convertible, the car still has good sightlines with the top up thanks to a large back glass window.

In the last 20 years, 240,000 Saab convertibles have been scooped up in the U.S., Britain, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Canada (to name Saab’s most successful worldwide markets). And, at least in the Canadian market, with a growth in Saab sales of 20% last year and 29% this year, the automaker is charting a strong course that’s not slowing down.